My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Wednesday, 15 February 2017

Wenceslaus Hollar’s etching of Georg Ettenhard

Wenceslaus Hollar (aka Wenzel Hollar; Václav Hollar)
(1607–77)

“Endpiece: Bust-length
portrait of Georg Ettenhard, Knight of the Holy Empire and Supreme Treasurer of
the Holy Cross in Spain, surrounded by six putti arranging fruit in two
cornucopias”, 1646, from the series of 12 pates, “Pædopægnion”, after Peeter
van Avont (1600–52). The first edition was published by Peeter van Avont but
this fourth state impression was from the edition published by Frederick de Widt
(1629/30 –1706). (Note: de Widt flourished as a publisher after 1648,
consequently, this impression is most likely printed between 1648 and 1706.)

Condition: good
impression but with some wear to the plate, trimmed to the image borderline.
The sheet is appropriately age toned but in excellent condition (i.e. there are
no tears, holes, abrasions, folds, foxing or significant stains).

I am selling
this rare and exceptionally interesting etching by one of the most famous
printmakers for a total cost of AU$184 (currently US$141.21/EUR133.69/GBP113.62
at the time of this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the
world.

If you are
interested in purchasing this visually arresting and important print, please
contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal
invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

Hollar was one
of the world’s greatest etchers. He had both the technical ability and, importantly,
the discipline to represent a subject with all the optical fidelity of a
camera. For example, Hollar’s mimetic renderings of fur muffs that Richard T
Godfrey (1994) in “Wenceslaus Hollar: A Bohemian Artist in England” claims “are
justly the best loved and admired of all of Hollar’s prints” (p. 127) are so
real that they “perfectly suggest the softness and warmth of fur” (ibid).

I needed to
clarify Hollar's remarkable technical virtuosity first as there is something
very special about this print: it fuses together in a single image the
phenomenon of binocular vision (i.e. looking at a subject with two eyes) and
monocular vision (i.e. looking at a subject with one eye).

Regarding the effect
of looking through two eyes—binocular vision—we take this phenomenon for
granted as most viewers have two eyes to examine a subject. Interestingly, very
few early artists chose to portray the effect of looking at a subject in this
way. For instance, with two eyes open the focus is on a very small area of a
subject and focal clarity diminishes in 360 degrees away from this point of
focus. This phenomenon is exemplified in Hollar’s print where the oval portrait
of Georg Ettenhard is rendered with a high degree of clarity while the putti
carrying their cornucopias on either side of him are rendered in gradually
diminishing degrees of focus away from his portrait.

By contrast,
monocular vision—looking with one eye—does not permit focus on a single point.
Instead it allows the eye to focus on a whole plane. The best way to understand
the difference between these two ways of looking at a subject is to think about
how a camera “sees” the world. Essentially, vision through a camera's lens is
not on a spot but on a whole plane of focus that is parallel to the camera's
lens and with diminishing focal clarity in parallel layers in front of the
plane in focus and behind it. In Hollar’s print, note how he has crafted the
three putti in the foreground with equal degrees of focal sharpness and the
three putti behind them with equal degrees of blurriness.